Here Comes May Day Again

If I had one wish left? I would March in today's May day Parade. This “May Day” not an emergency call. It was the night before May 1st 1927 All through the house preparation was made, No Maypole dancing for this crowd. A serious parade would be underway. “Papa “who are we going to march with?” “We’ll see we’ll see. Now for the posters.” Free Mooney Billings, and the Scottsboro Boys. Papa “are we gonna sing Hold the Fort?” I lived in house of rebels. There were Socialists, communists, freethinkers, anarchists, Wobblies, atheists, modern dancers, single taxers and lots more. All preparing to march. This was our workers holiday. Maybe the only thing we all agreed to. Long ago it started the eight hour day fight. This 1930 day I stayed out of school. In the workers holiday.” Teacher, “what is that?” “This day we celebrate workers who built this land.” Papa are we gonna sing Hold The Fort?” There I was with my Papa on Fifth Avenue at 50th Street Amongst the bricklayer and mason unions. Girls were with the modern dancers. Maybe the Garment Workers brigade? Up came the signs. “Jobs for all” “ Old age, Social Security. That’s where the Social Security fight started. Free Mooney Billings and Scottsboro Boys.” We started our march down Fifth Avenue All the way to Union Square. Singing Hold The fort for we are coming Union men be strong. Side by side We battle onward victory be won. With upraised fists flags flying Marched before the reviewing stand Papa said we were 250-300 thousand strong. I knew we had to win all our demands. “Hold the Fort” as we were there.” Holding my Papas big hand. The proudest thirteen year old in the land. NOW? THE PROUDEST 94 YEAR OLD IN THE LAND.

Visit to "Memorial" or Mecca?

Mostly taken from notes that Elaine made during visit.

Kate and dear friend Elaine and I went to see Dr. Brown at “Memorial” Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. MSKCC. (I am overwhelmed with the basic size of the institution.There are thousands of employees. I also learned, it is not unionized.) I thought we were gong to get an update on what was learned from the new Catscan at our last visit. On the way home by cellphone we learned that growth in Pancreas was inoperable because it was on top of an artery. Also that there were spots on the liver that were suspicious that cancer had spread. Before leaving we were given our next appointment with Dr. Brown.

We had hoped that Dr. Brown could answer the question, If the liver and Pancreas cancer are the same, it is assumed in 99 percent of cases, then what can be done about it? Or what is the intervention ? Nope that didn’t work. Dr. Brown explained that she was just a “procedure doctor” who would do the Biopsy. An analysis of that effort would go through the lab and then we would hear about a plan for intervention. Of course my concern is if there is no really good intervention why bother? I prefer what good days I can pull out of this time of my life than some kind of Cheemo that will make what I have left miserable. What’s the point?

I do appreciate the work being done at MSKCC and yet an institution that big can’t help falling into role playing. “I just do this part.” Someone else on the 4th floor will do your blood work. The 3rd floor person will do your EKG. and so on. Each did their job well I am sure. What I am not sure is how this place can manage not to begin to feel like a factory with each person playing a role. “This is what I do so don’t ask me about anything else.” Here I am thinking as a Sociologist. How can that be avoided in an Institution the size of Sloan Kettering? Don’t know. Still would love to know the answer to my question?

We’re home. It’s late. I get an e mail from Elaine. Found a Doctor at Stony Brook who has developed an electrical shocking system for killing cancer cells with out destroying the surrounding organ. I’m curious. Its where my Internist works. He’s in Madagascar. Gets my e mail on the Doctor involved. He’ll speak with him when he’s back on Tuesday. I wonder is this just another “Hope Ring.” I remember one where a doctor in Mexico was curing Cancer with Almonds. People in my situation who are still feeling pretty good have a lot of trouble with just quitting. “Damm there must be something I can do beside pray.”

Well in the meantime I put in a nice day in the shop working on Thomas Jefferson's Stand Up Desk. Not a simple piece of furniture as it is built to do a variety of functions. Doing the best I can short of actually knowing him.

The Flight From Conversation

(Okay it’s past midnight. Can’t sleep Need to comment)

“We think that our sips of online connections
add up to a gulp. They don’t” Sherry Turkle

Lead story Sunday Review NY Times.

If you remember, some time back I wrote a blog about same subject. The NY. Times considered the issue important enough to give it the whole front page of the Sunday Review and another inside half page. Man this has got to be big news. Really?

The author Sherry Turkle is a Psychology Professor at MIT. leaves out a most important loss from Text messaging. I’ll get to that in a minute. There was a book published back in 1950 called “The Lonely Crowd.” It too was a big eye opener re. relationships. Revealing the fact that back then all those guys rushing to and fro on the commuter trains into Grand Central from their manicured lawn homes in Connecticut were a “Lonely Crowd,” In that book Reisman argued that the emergence of the “other directed” personality was a real threat to a democracy based on the need for social cohesion. You wonder what happened to social cohesion? Look around our present political scene.

The present Facebook, Twitter, Linkdin, Tweeter et.al present another danger. It is not just the loss of conversation but more important the loss of emotion, feelings in our relation with each other. At no point in this long, Turkle article does the experience of the text recipients feelings, emotions gets dealt with. Yes of course there are adjectives galore for describing feelings.(Cyrano De Bergerac) That’s not the same as that very same experience live, face to face communication. Look at it this way.

You want to propose to your loved one. You could send it on your Blackberry between a meeting and a coffee break or a pee. Benefit could be if rejected you wouldn’t have to deal with what the face of the rejector looked like or expressed. No pickup of feeling or emotional expression. How did he look when he popped the question. Could the receiver look into his eyes and see the love she’s looking for. Anybody could be writing text messages for their friends. In the same way as smart kids were being paid in Long Island to take the SAT tests for admission to State Colleges, Admitted feelings are of know consequence in that situation. However in personal texting, I am told 95 percent is strictly personal stuff. In that case feelings are critical to understanding,

When I think of all the conversations I have had in my life you could never understand the arguments that Carl Marzani and I had on the beach at Fire Island unless you could take in the decibel level of the yelling. Inevitably we would attract a crowd and before long there could be a crowd of 20-30 people arguing the cold-war. abortion, the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel and any other subject that someone would start. That was conversation on a mass scale. Personally I preferred a one on one exchange in a place where I could read the other persons feelings. At times the feelings and the talk where in conflict. Then it was necessary to help the other figure out what they really wanted to say, That’s a learning process, This does not exist in texting.

What is lost in texting is the personal intimate messages that each of gives off in a conversation called emotions. Why does it matter? It is in our felt, I emphasize the word FELT because that’s where our creative and learning juices dwell. Yes that’s the place of poetry, music, and yes love and hate and all the emotions in between. Texting tends to cripple our emotional life because it transfers a message but not the emotion as well, or not at all, as a face to face or belly to belly encounter. So there.

Cancer General Motors and Ford

Much of lifetime in battle with

GM Ford Chrysler, Delco

Just to make their workplaces

Fit for humans, with a living wage

An assembly line with dignity & respect.

Curry Chevrolet very first strike.

Learned to eat raw clams, slurp oysters.

“The kids very first oyster,” How the men laughed.

Ha ha ha ha ha and Another trespassing arrest.

Ford Weehawken Assembly over the fence

Leaflets inside the plant. We won for the U.A.W.

Good Works at Henry Ford’s Foundation

Voting rights, Civil rights, Women’s rights.

Miners for Democracy, Anti Poverty.

Old Ford money fighting the good fight.

Here I am at Sloan Kettering hospital

Two giants of GM Left their money to fight cancer.

Do they know they’re treating an old adversary?

Their way of saying? “Sorry for the cancers we caused?


Arrived at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) to see Dr. A. He had seen the Cat-scan from Stony Brook. Thought he could operate remove growth from pancreas. Decided on new Cat-scans done at MSKCC. New Cat-scans taken right then and there. He would let us know results on the way home. In the car driving back from the city came the call.

Problem. The growth is over an artery. Can’t operate. They will call Monday to setup appointment for Endoscopy so they can see is malignant and what kind etc. and start Chemo. The Chemo not as devastating as many others. So there we are. Really slouching to 95. My best RS

"NEW OIL ENERGY OPTIMISM"

(First a comment on my last blog about doctor problems in Medicare. Turns out I have a little bit of a problem in my Pancreas. Something there that ain’t suppose to be there. So once again I have to tell you, “we’ll see.” In the meantime lets press forward.)

On Wednesday April 11th the NY Times ran a special 10 page section on Energy. So, what did they have to say. Opening headline. FUEL TO BURN: NOW WHAT? “Abundant and cheaper fuel. Damping enthusiasm for clean forms of energy and derailing efforts to wean the nation from it’s wasteful energy habits.” Yes, we have been scared stiff about a flair up in the Middle East, like a bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites would hit us with another “cars waiting on gas lines to fill up.” Politically that could be an election buster for Obama. So as far as our cars are concerned we can go back to the old Industrial Revolution party YIPPEEE “we can have it all. Including gas guzzlers cause our very own oil boom is on its way.

The big surprises are coming as a result of NEW TECHNOLOGIES. (Think Titannic here.Man conquering nature. That very old dream.) Years ago this is what my local Hardware store buddies were telling me. “Listen Robert stop worrying about peak oil.” I had published a blog about how we were about to run out of one of the biggest oil fields in Saudi Arabia. That would have been a game changer. The hardware store gang were right. Technology to the rescue with new techniques for deep drilling and horizontal line drilling to find new sources of oil. Here at home we are doing that with old wells in Texas, California etc.

And then there’s FRACKING FOR SHALE OIL & GAS! First of all the fossil fuel retrieved as a result of fracking is by far the dirtiest. It requires a lot of water and chemicals to be literally exploded down as far as 5,000 feet or more to loosen the tar like substance and then to refine it and turn it into gasoline or diesel fuel. Frankly we don’t really know all the harm that can result from this type of activity. (BUT WHO CARES BECUSE WE ARE BACK PARTYING IN THE WORLD OF FOSSIL FUELS,)

Here’s the elephant in the room that we simply refuse to recognize. Pssst, that would interfere with the PARTY and the money to be made in this new market. Okay you think I make this stuff up? New York Times, ”oil production in the US could reach an astounding 27 million barrels by 2020 almost double the production of 2011.” That would also double the amount of carbon dioxide that we are dumping into the atmosphere. That would double the speed of the natural breakdown of climate change. There are wee little breakthroughs on Climate Change recognition. A few times of late I have noticed that news Anchors on major networks when reporting on the increase in Tornados, Floods, Drought's Heat waves, Cold waves etc. are beginning to ask the question, “COULD THESE CHANGES IN WEATHER PATTERNS BE THE RESULT OF CLIMATE CHANGE?” HURRAY THEY'RE WAKING UP. Maybe it’s to late.

It is precisely because we are reluctant to give up the old Industrial party of burning relatively cheap fossil fuel that we are destroying the very planet that we have been partying on for all these years. With the Polar Bear acting as the Canary in the coal mine. (When the mine gas level killed the Canary the miners knew it was time to get out, quick.) The Polar bear is telling us to stop dumping the million of tons of Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere. It has defrosted the Arctic Ocean.

There are warning signs all over the world. Rapid increase of glacial ice melt raising ocean levels. Glaciers melting, forerunner of no drinking water for millions of people, Acidification of the oceans, destroying basic food sources, I fear we will end up destroying the very place we we had a wonderful life for 200 years. Future generations will have a tough time trying to understand what was wrong with us? Just as I do now.

Spider-web---Medical Care

My plan was to was write about the Ryan Romney Budget and how to explain it to the Citizenry. Instead I got caught in the “go see the doctor routine.” Like an old Model T Ford parts of me continue to wear out. Natural as I slouch to 95. Through much of my adult life I have had Hyper Tension.( High Blood Pressure.) That sent me on regular doctor visits. It was in those I observed that more than one purpose was being served by people going to see “the doctor.” Through questioning people in waiting rooms I began to observe some patterns. (This was in the early days of a New York City Insurance, H.I.P. started by Mayor LaGuardia back in the 1940s. Now of course it includes Medicare and lots of other insurance plans.)

A number of older patients literally had nothing to do this day so they decide to “go see the doctor.” It is often possible to get a conversation going in a medical waiting room as people seem anxious to tell their own medical stories while listening to others. In a sense it’s a medical, can you top this one. What began to strike me was the doctor visits might very well be a “social call” for the lonesome. Many years ago I suggested to New York Hospital that they have a Social Worker in the waiting room area for the patients to talk with. That might have eliminated the need to talk with the doctor.

This “social calling” for want of a better phrase raises difficult issue for the doctors. This is particularly true for those dealing primarily with Medicare people. On any number of occasions in doctors offices I experienced the following. My advanced age often leads to a discussion of Genes. “I’d sure take your genes any-day.” Often a “Blessing goes with it. (Those I tend to bank. As I screw up I give up a blessing but keep track of the ones I still have, Never have found the “bank” empty of Blessings. Hence my long life.) This is what follows.

There is a weird compulsion on the part of doctors to do something for the patient. Soon after WW2 friends who through the GI Bill had become doctors would complain about patients who insisted on a prescription or a specialist referral or something in return for their office visit. Our friend Arnold said he was writing placebo prescriptions, sugar, salt, aspirin anything that made the patient feel like they had a worthwhile trip to the doctor. There have been occasions when I wanted to say to the doctor all you need to tell me is “look for your age all your signs indicate your doing just fine. so keep doing what your doing and I’ll see you in six months.” I have been told, for most patients that simply doesn’t work.

I do believe this social needs of the elderly is at least part of what drives up the Medicare costs. Unnecessary doctor visits plus unnecessary doctor referrals and procedures to satisfy the patients desire “TO DO SOMETHING.” It also feeds the need for the next appointment that assures some social contact. I had hoped that at least some of this problem would have been solved with the advent of the social media. The number of people seeing doctors are overwhelmingly seniors who grew up without IPad, Facebook, Twitter, Linkdin, Meet Me.etc. This is a real problem facing the folks who are trying to rain in the rising costs of medical care. Educating the consumer can help but I believe it’s gonna take a lot more than that like some tough discipline on the doctors part.

As to my attendance at the Doctors. We are waiting for specialist reports. Then we’ll see.